Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last blog.
I took a couple of weeks off from updating the website over the holidays. Partly because I needed some days off to be with my family, and partly because Susan and I were hurriedly getting the Prayer Tower ready for its dedication service on January 6th. Anyway, as a result there will simply be no blogs for Monday, December 24th (Christmas Eve) and Monday, December 31st (New Year's Eve).
Excuses aside, sometimes there is not much else to say when you are focused on one thing. And I have been focused on one thing — prayer.
God has called our church into a season of prayer to bring us to revival this year. I have been praying that our church will pray. It sounds redundant, but prayer is what we need now more than anything else. However, I find myself as a person who does better in the heat of battle than in the calm of church growth.
It has been said that soldiers returning from long periods of fighting have a hard time adjusting to civilian life. They have been so trained to take orders and carry them out, no matter what, that day to day living becomes a challenge. So it is when you have taken on spiritual forces and fought for the freedom of your church. In the calm that follows you feel like you are still spoiling for a fight.
A calm peace and unity are beginning to flow over Calvary. One in which God is allowing us to build. One in which we can begin to reach out to the lost and hurting in our community. One in which there is a confidence that God will supply our needs. I’m not sure if our battles have brought us to an area of victory, but I do know “when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.” (Luke 4:13)
With the demonic forces at bay, building church might just be the hardest battle yet, in a manner of speaking. Just like I learned with the construction of the Prayer Tower, tearing things out is a lot quicker than putting things back. This season of planting and building, growing and reaping, cannot be dealt with in the same way as a time of “uprooting, tearing down, destroying, and overthrowing.” (Jeremiah 1:10)
With this in mind, I have been seeking the Lord for a change in ministry modes. How do we start putting it all back together? How do we overcome the apathy of the flesh? How do we disciple and discipline the believers we have without losing them? I have so many questions. “Lord, I have been trained for war, how do I live in peace?” It takes a while for a warrior to learn a trade in which he can beginning building a new life. He has to learn to quit blowing things up and begin to build things back.
In the summer of last year the Lord began this process in me. The first and foremost area he wants to build in me, and in our church, is a foundation of corporate and personal prayer. Last year I preached a series called The Power of Prayer, as a result of that leading. More messages on prayer have and will follow. On top of that, the Lord instructed me to turn the old entry tower into a place of prayer. He also wants a prayer ministry to arise from it that will reach our entire community. I’m still working out the details, but I am now beginning to embrace this vision in my spirit man.
The battles of the past teach you to be ever watchful for the work of the enemy, but more importantly, we must get busy with the work of the Lord. We cannot sit still with sword and shield in hand, waiting for another attack. We must recognize that the Lord has given us an era of peace within which to build his kingdom.
The transition, as the Lord has described it to me, is to change from David’s reign to Solomon’s reign. David was a man of war. Solomon enjoyed a time of peace in which to strengthen the kingdom and establish the temple of the Lord.
During the week of prayer, I used Solomon’s prayer of dedication, which he prayed before the new temple he had built, to draw insights from as we dedicated the new Prayer Tower. It is a time to beat our swords into plowshares and begin to reap the harvest of our sons and daughters for the kingdom.
Whereas our focus was correcting within, now our focus will be reaching out to our community. We will be investing in our people to make them able workers in the field. That’s where the harvest is. Sometimes it’s hard to change a warrior into a farmer or to change military terms into horticultural terms, but we must if we are going to reap this harvest in season.
Yes, we must always be resisting the devil, but now is a time of embracing the future of our church and the mission God has called us to in this community.